Don’t sweat Yelp, early days for the Nikkei and another ‘Wolf’ taster

By Shawn Langlois

Flickr/kaysha

Here we go. Another day of “bubble-like” markets is upon us, and the Fed is back to do its part of the blowing. How do we know it’s a bubble, aside from one of the biggest ballers in asset management telling us so? Go to a party wearing your “financial professional” name badge.

Lance Roberts of Streettalk Live offered up this telling observation from some soiree he attended over the weekend: “Wives were walking around with freshly-injected lips and other augmented body parts. Men were brandishing new Rolex watches while bragging about their latest acquisitions. I know more about their personal stock portfolios than I do about their children’s latest successes.” Oh, so painfully familiar.

While some sectors are clearly looking bubbly, others are still playing catch-up, according to 361 Capital’s Blaine Rollins. The fact that REITs, homebuilders and utilities are joining the party could mean another move higher is on the way.

“While we enjoy watching Elon Musk’s companies take share in the equity markets, we also know that it will be healthier for the markets in the long run if GE and Pfizer also join in on the wealth creation,” Rollins wrote.

The economy:The Fed will release its statement today after its two-day meeting ends. We’re looking for some indication of when tapering will begin. Communications have been funky from the central bank of late, and expectations for what’s next are all over the place. Read more from the Capitol Report.

The Fed statement will undoubtedly steal most of the spotlight, but we’ll also get an ADP jobs report and some inflation data this morning.

The buzz: After going through bankruptcy last year, selling off some of its valuable patents and making large job cuts, Eastman Kodak
/quotes/zigman/21928705/delayed/quotes/nls/ekodEKOD is returning to a listing on the NYSE. The company, which had been trading as an OTC stock under the “EKOD” ticker, will re-debut on the NYSE Friday as “KODK”.

Keep an eye out for official word regarding SAC Capital Advisors, which is expected to plead guilty to securities fraud as part of a landmark criminal insider-trading settlement with federal prosecutors, sources told The Wall Street Journal. As part of the deal, SAC will agree to stop managing outside money and to pay the government criminal penalties of about $1.2 billion, the largest-ever insider-trading penalty.

The chart of the day: The Nikkei
/quotes/zigman/5986735/realtimeJP:NIK may have shot up some 60% in just six months, but Ed Miller says it’s still early in the index’s bull move. He used this chart to back up his technical case for a resumption of the rally. “After completing a double-bottom spanning four years, the index broke out late last year … and has since been carving out a classic pennant formation,” he wrote on Charts Etc. “Flags and pennants are continuation patterns, meaning they typically occur within a trend and resolve with the trend continuing — in this case, the trend being up.”

StockCharts.com

The call of the day: The Fly from the iBankCoin blog is still a big Yelp fan. Back in July, he earned “call of the day” status with his glowing assessment of Yelp’s future. The stock has almost doubled since that time. It’s in trouble this morning, off 10% not so much on earnings, but rather the share sale. The Fly says he got out last week, posting some timestamps to prove it. Now he wants back in.

“Because, like the apex predator, Jeff Bezos, [Yelp CEO] Stoppelman is out to conquer the world, at least his little niche part of it,” he wrote in his blog post. “Being that we’re a gluttonous people, I see great things happening for this company over the next five years. I will be buying back shares of Yelp as soon as the Gods release me from the hell they’ve trapped me in.”

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Need to Know (NTK) guides investors to the most important, insightful items required to chart a course ahead of each trading day. Anchored by lead writer Shawn Langlois, NTK will sift through the fire hose of news, commentary and data, from traditional and non-traditional sources, and extract what’s most essential. You can start reading NTK here as it begins publishing at approximately 6:30 a.m. ET, or sign up here to get a version in your email box every morning at approximately 8:45. a.m. ET.